


Playground wars.

by VathySkotadi



Category: VA-11 Hall-A (Video Game)
Genre: Cute, Gen, Kids, Playing, non-romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 06:09:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21831274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VathySkotadi/pseuds/VathySkotadi
Summary: It's the second time Stella visits the park Sei usually plays at, and this time she and the other kids in it are playing a rather rougher game than what Stella is used to. How will she handle herself?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Playground wars.

As the car – that honestly edged on being a limo – stopped in front of the park, Sei thought about slowing the momentum of her swing to get off safely. However, she was maybe a little overeager, so she decided to jump off the highest point of her current swing. She fell to the ground and stumbled a few steps before coming to a halt, and upon looking at the car again, she smiled as she noticed the nice red-haired girl with the cat ears coming out of it.

When their eyes met, Stella ran towards her with excitement. Sei smiled when she got close, and was met with a similar smile from her newest friend. “You came with normal clothes today!” Sei pointed out, remembering the frilly dress Stella had used the first time she’d come to the park.

Finally stopping in front of her, Stella nodded. “Father said it would make playing more fun. And also, that it was better not to ruin more dresses…” she looked down at her plain white t-shirt and slightly oversized shorts. The sandals she wore were clearly expensive, but they didn’t pay them any mind.

Sei chuckled. She looked back at The Castle – or at least, that’s what the kids in the area called the collection of platforms, slides and various climbable surfaces that sat in the middle of a massive sandbox on the center of the park. There was a dozen kids at that playground at the moment, and a couple had already noticed Stella, recognizing her from the last time, and were waving at her.

“Come on, let’s play,” Sei grabbed the rich girl’s hand and led the way towards The Castle.

“Oh, ok. What are we playing today?” Stella asked, struggling slightly to follow Sei’s pace.

“King of the castle!” Sei explained. “Have you played it before?”

“Uhm… no,” Stella admitted, sounding kind of ashamed. Sei turned for a second as they walked to smile reassuringly before continuing forward.

“Don’t worry, it’s easy. I’m sure they’ll put you on my team anyways,” Sei explained.

They reached the sandbox, and the kids who had been playing there all stopped for a moment and got out of the castle to say hello to Stella. The girl blushed almost every time someone said something to her, as if she didn’t expect anyone to be nice to her, so Sei tried to encourage her to speak up and say things.

“Ok, ok, let’s start the next round. Stella, you’re on Sei’s team,” a brown-haired guy said. Martin. He had been the King of the winner team last time, so he got to set the teams now.

“I want to be on Sei’s team on this round too,” another kid, this one blonde, said.

“You can be there if you want, Luke,” Martin said with a sigh. Luke smiled and nodded. Most kids wanted to be on Sei’s team, since whichever side was it that Sei played, it was more often than not the winner. “But if Luke’s going to Sei’s side, then Trevor’s coming to my side,” he declared.

Trevor sighed, but didn’t complain. “And the rest can stay the same. My team gets to be on The Castle! Come on guys,” Martin said, turned around and ran towards the nearest slide to climb it, even if there was a stair just besides it.

“Uhm, what are the rules?” Stella whispered on Sei’s ear with some nervousness.

“Oh, it’s easy,” Sei smiled as she began her explanation. “There’s two teams, and each one picks a King. One starts at The Castle, the other outside. Our mission – the outsiders – is to throw their King out of the castle and get ours on it. Their mission is to protect their King and stop ours from getting on. No punching, kicking, hair pulling or sand throwing. Also, we try not to actually throw each other off the platforms too harshly, because last week Billy broke his wrist and we all got scolded for it,” Sei said. Stella paled visibly at the idea. “But that’s another matter. The insiders of the castle have to defend themselves for five minutes. If they manage to do that, they win. Oh, also, if you’re thrown from The Castle, you’re not allowed back up. But it has to be after you’ve stepped on a platform. If you get thrown from a ladder or something like that before making it up then it doesn’t count.”

“I think the insiders have an advantage,” Stella said.

“Yeah, and before you arrived we lost almost every round, since they had one more. But now we’re even – seven against seven.”

“Who’s gonna be our king for this round?” one of the other kids on the team asked.

“I say we let Stella be it,” Sei said.

“M-me? But isn’t the king super important?” Stella asked, clearly not liking the idea.

“Yes, but it’s also the easiest to play! You just wait down and when we throw the insider King out you get up!” Sei explained excitedly. “Also make sure you don’t fall once you’re on the platform, because then it’s a tie and we have to repeat the process.”

Stella nodded with some hesitance, but seemed to relax after Sei offered her a wide smile. From The Castle, Martin’s voice reached them as he shouted. “We begin at the count of ten! Sei, let go of Stella, pushing or pulling your King is against the rules!”

“Oh, right,” Sei let go of Stella, getting ready for the assault. The guys at The Castle began the count, and the outsiders positioned themselves as close to the ladders or climbing ramps as possible. Stella tailed Sei, staying behind her. She was still doubting, but determined to play like everyone else, she began looking at the castle. Sei, in particular, had gotten herself a place in front of the spiral slide that went up to the highest platform – but that was a trick. She wanted to make the insiders think she was going to go up the slide and then grab the rope ladder on its side.

“Nine…” Martin counted out loud. “TEN!”

Sei dashed towards the slide, and as she hoped would happen, one of the insiders all but dived into it to stop her from getting up – but she didn’t get into the slide, and instead climbed the ladder in a swift series of movements that would have made her mother faint with how dangerous they were.

She wasn’t the first one inside, though. Luke, from earlier, had somehow managed to climb one of the ramps and was struggling against two kids trying to push him down a slide. The kid that had jumped down to catch Sei caught himself before touching the sand down, so he wasn’t out, to which Sei considered dropping down the slide again to force him down. But that would make her lose time.

Martin, of course, had chosen himself as the king, and was waiting in the middle of the battlefield with a mean look on his eyes. He always took the game a little too seriously for Sei’s liking, but that she was used to it. Sei ran forward across a small bridge as two more outsiders got inside. This was a good run, last time they didn’t even get two people on the platforms.

Sei joined the brawl on the biggest area of The Castle, where kids laughed and insulted each other as they fought to stay on the platform. Luke was on the verge of being pushed off, so she grabbed one of the boys pushing him by the arms, letting him – even if he was kind of scrawny – to defend himself fairly well, even if his opponent was seven years old, a year older than most other kids in the group and two years older than Sei.

Sei had grabbed on to Waltz, the kid who rarely said a word but liked music. He managed to slip away from Sei before she got a chance to push him off, and then they were face to face. He had his back to the edge of the platform, so Sei charged forward. He, however, saw it coming and side-stepped. Sei barely caught herself before falling on her face, but she knew it was over. Waltz was gonna push her off without waiting.

But that didn’t happen. When Sei turned, a red-haired girl with cat ears was pushing off against the guy who was obviously stronger than her. She was pushing with all her might, and though Waltz resisted, he wasn’t having too easy a time with it. “Stella?” Sei asked, surprised. However, she quickly regained her wits and helped her, and together they managed to push Waltz off the platform, who couldn’t help it and fell to the sand below with a grunt.

Sei felt great for a moment before realizing there was a strange silence around. She turned, to see that every kid had realized Stella was on the platform.

“Throw her!” Martin ordered, pointing straight at Stella.

Sei got in front of her, but it was futile. Everyone remaining in the platform dashed for them, and Sei ended up being pushed off by Luke by accident as he tried to stop the others. Five seconds later, Sei fell on the sand next to her with a yelp.

Martin stepped up to the edge and smiled triumphantly. “Ha! We win! Same as before, we start when I say so!”

The outsiders who were still inside The Castle walked down with annoyed faces. They looked at Stella, who looked like she was about to cry, and not because she had been thrown off.

“Hey, it’s ok. Why did you follow me?” Sei said as she got up and helped Stella.

“The kid on the slide,” Stella pointed to the spiral slide. “He was climbing back up and he was gonna get you, so I climbed the stairs and pushed him off…”

Sei stared at her. “That’s amazing!” she said. “And then you saved me that second time… Maybe we shouldn’t make you the King this time.”

When Sei and Stella got back to the group, the kids were watching them with some annoyance. Sei presented her idea, to which she got some mixed reactions. “I don’t know, Sei,” Luke said. “She doesn’t really know how to play.”

“It was her first time. Making her king was the bad choice. You have to know how to play it,” Horace said. He had bright green hair that he insisted was natural, but everyone knew it wasn’t because Timmy had seen him dying it one time.

The guys argued for a little while, at which point Sei told them to stop. “Listen, listen. Let’s let Stella pick what she wants,” Sei turned to look at her.

Stella, who was looking a little more confident than before, considered it for a second. “I don’t want to be the king.”

“Are you sure the rich girl can fight?” One of the guys said.

“She can, I saw her,” Sei defended her, seeing how the others hesitated. “Two times, actually.”

After some more words, they ended up agreeing that if Sei vouched for her, then it was fine. So it was that they decided Luke would be the king this round and everyone got ready. Since Sei couldn’t repeat her strategy from before, she instead chose the straightforward way and put herself in front of one of the ramps with colored stones stuck to it. Waltz waited on top of it, with his harsh stare. When he spoke, everyone listened, even if Sei often thought he didn’t make much sense.

“Nine… Ten!” Martin finished counting, and Sei sprinted up.

Her idea was to sidestep Waltz, but the boy was a little taller and his arms, when he stretched them, covered the width of the ramp. Stella, after some considering, went for the dangerous option: Tackle. Tackles weren’t off the rules.

She and Waltz fell to the ground, rolling, but Sei was on the platform. She somehow got up before him and found that the only other outsider who’d gotten up was Stella, who had climbed from the other side of The Castle, up the really slippery slide that was near impossible to climb quickly. None of the insiders could go fight her because they were busy stopping the Outsiders, so Martin was the one who had to move and stop her.

Sei was busy wrestling with Waltz now, who had gotten up, and in her spinning with the boy she couldn’t help to look away. Worried as she was, she also wanted to win, so for the moment she focused on getting this guy off…

“Come on…” Sei pushed with all her strength while holding on to Waltz, and when the boy tripped over a loose plank, Sei saw her chance. She fully let go, getting away, and Waltz stumbled backwards for a moment before falling on her butt on a slide that went straight to the ground. Sei ran forward and pushed him hard before he got a chance to get up, and he ended up in the sand.

Now, she turned. Stella was probably out already, but-

However, there she was, probably the smallest member of the group pushing against Martin, whose brown hair showed the signs of a rough fight. He was about to push Stella down the slide she’d climbed up from, so Sei began to ran towards them – she had a small bridge to cross – in hopes of catching Martin off-guard and pushing him off after he got Stella.

Only, Stella suddenly let go, side-stepping. Martin let out a surprised cry and fell on his tummy on the slide, going down with his hands in front of him. He clearly scraped them when he got to the ground, but at least he didn’t fall on his face.

Sei was stunned for a second, but someone else from the outsiders called for Luke, who dashed up the same ramp Sei had used and got on the platform before any of the insiders managed to stop him. He let out a cry of victory, and the match was over.

“Ok, same teams! But this time we’re the insiders!” Luke cried. When the teams got together in their respective places, Stella got much friendlier looks and congratulatory pats on her back. “That was amazing, Stella. I think making you king when we’re defending is a good idea.”

“I agree,” Sei said.

“Honestly, I didn’t expect the girl who showed up in a dress last time to be good at this…” Horace gave her a thumb up. In Sei’s opinion that hadn’t exactly been a compliment, but hey.

After some more discussion, they decided Stella would indeed be the king, and got ready for the round. Sei had chosen the ramp closest to Stella, to try and protect her. The countdown began, and Stella was looking at the small roof of The Castle with curiosity.

“Hey, climbing up there isn’t against the rules, is it?” Stella asked.

And Sei smiled. This girl was _fun_ to play with.

**Author's Note:**

> It may be surprising to see it from Sei's perspective rather than Stella, but I wanted to try writing from the perspective of the girl who was _used_ to these kinds of stuff and the subversion of her expectations regarding Stella.  
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
